2012 PokerStars PCA dramatic decline in attendance

Day 1a of the 2012 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (better known by the acronym PCA) saw a total of 418 players register for the prestigious tournament, a far cry from the 647 players that registered on Day 1a last year. Despite the attendance decline (which most assuredly had something to do with the fallout from Black Friday) the tournament still looks to be on pace to attract over 1,000 total entrants for the fifth straight year (in 2010 and 2011 the PCA managed to attract over 1,500 entrants).

The chip-leader at the end of Day 1a was Russian poker player Alexey Repik who was the only player in the field who managed to crack the 200,000 chip-mark, taking his starting stack of 30,000 chips and ending the day with 220,100 chips. Here is a look at the top 10 chip counts from Day 1a of the 2012 PokerStars PCA:

1. Alexey Repik — 220,100

2. Richard Bruning — 193,100

3. Salvatore Bianco — 192,400

4. Marc Tschirch — 176,000

5. Marcel Bjerkmann — 166,000

6. Marco Palombi — 148,600

7. Connor Drinan — 142,700

8. David Granados — 139,300

9. Babak Malekain — 134,800

10. Lawrence Greenberg — 132,600

The highest chip-stack for the big name players in the field was Faraz Jaka, who finished the day with 129,500 chips, just out of the top 10 in 11th place.

Day 1b of the tournament will get underway at Noon local time, with the PCA expecting at least 500 entrants to show-up for Day 1b –likely quite a few more than this will register throughout the day. Regardless, unless a huge number of players show-up for Day 1b, this looks to be the lowest PCA turnout since 2007 when 937 players participated.

For players who busted out of the Main Event on Day 1a they can now choose between enjoying the beaches and resorts of the Bahamas or if they are true poker junkies they can play in one of the three side events scheduled for Sunday:

This entry was posted
on Sunday, January 8th, 2012 at 10:49 am and is filed under Poker News.
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